Begin with the End in Mind

In the last article applying Stephen R. Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People to your health, we looked at how to apply Habit 1 – Being Proactive. Proactive people consistently look to add to their health as opposed to waiting for a crisis to look after themselves. As a result, they are not only healthier, more vital and have more energy, they typically face fewer costly health crises as well.

This week we continue our journey and will delve into Habit 2 – Beginning with the End in Mind. Habit 2 is about knowing where you are ultimately going in the short and long term, taking a BIG PICTURE view of your health, and asking yourself what is REALLY important when it comes to your health.

Being clear on what end you have in mind is important for several reasons. First, it will prevent you from going down avenues that either don’t help or actually hurt your big picture goals. Second, it will provide you with motivation and inspiration when challenged. Finally, it will serve as your guide when faced with choices about what to do or not to do.

Let’s say you want to lose some weight. Nothing wrong with that goal if it is important to you. A short-sighted approach would ask, ‘how much weight?’ If we begin with the end in mind, several other questions need to be asked.

“What is the purpose of losing the weight? Why do I want to lose it? What value will losing the weight provide me? Opportunities as a result? What other benefits will I get? How will the weight loss impact those I care about? Is this consistent with the Ultimate vision for my life?”

Do you see the difference? The first approach MAY produce a transient short term change that may or may not have an overall benefit to your health. The second approach is much more likely to succeed in both the short and long term and actually get you what you really want.

If we took the short sighted approach to losing weight, there are many ways we could go about it. For example, starting to use heroin could be an effective strategy for achieving your goal.

‘Ridiculous!’ you say? Absolutely, yet this is why it is important to begin with the end in mind. Along the same lines as heroin – but less ridiculous – doing a fad, crash diet, working out incessantly, taking a diet drug or herb or looking for any one of the many quick fixes out there can help you with the short-sighted objective without moving you towards what you really want.

If you begin with the end in mind you know WHY you want to lose weight. Perhaps it is to have the energy and vitality to achieve other goals. Maybe you want to look more attractive. Live longer and healthier so that you can play with your grandchildren and watch them grow up. Maybe you just want to be healthy enough to dance with your spouse.

You see, if you know WHY you want to lose weight, now it becomes much clearer HOW you will go about doing it. In any of the examples in the above paragraph, taking heroin (or following any of those options) is inconsistent with what you really want and are therefore really NOT options. Different focus, different destiny.

I invite you to all spend some time to look at your goals from the perspective of Beginning with The End in Mind and I will leave you with some homework before next week. Again, feel free to apply this to ALL areas of your life – not only your health.

While this may sound a bit morbid, the first part of your homework is to write your own eulogy. Imagine you are sitting at the back of the room at your own funeral. Write the script for what you would want your eulogy to say about you and your life. What will you be remembered for? What did you value? What did you contribute? Who did you inspire and how? Spend some time on this exercise.

Once your eulogy is complete, I would like you to write a personal mission statement in regards to your health. A short paragraph with 2 or 3 sentences is plenty. When it comes to your health, what are you about, what are you committed to and what are you creating. Make sure your mission is consistent with the life vision you created with your eulogy.

Please, do this homework and next week we will be ready to Put First Things First!

I had a good laugh with one of my long-time patients this week when we were talking about our upcoming Best Year of Your Life workshop that I will be presenting at the end of January and the series of articles I will be posting starting with this one. She remembered workshop and articles with the same name each of the last several years and was joking about each year being the best. I pointed out that this was EXACTLY my point.

When we make sustainable progress in any area of our lives, it means we can build on it. When we create more awareness, learn new strategies, build new structures, and develop more wisdom we OWN those things and we can use them to take the next step for a lifetime. In this way – if we do a job of this – each year CAN be the best year of our lives regardless of external circumstances.

For this year’s series of articles I have decided to use Stephen R. Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and apply them to your health. Of course any and all of these habits can be used to improve your relationships, career, finances, or any other important part of your life.

There are several key concepts that run throughout Covey’s 1989 classic and will be important to keep in mind as you progress through this series.

This process is one that is, “Inside-out.” This means that in order to be healthier (or happier, or wealthier) you have to start by focusing on YOU. There is perhaps no other area that the average person is “Outside-in” than in the way they see their health. To be healthier, don’t start looking for it in a pill, a diet, a workout, a doctor (even an amazing chiropractor!). We will not start with anything outside of you. Starting on the inside will allow us to not only be more effective in choosing and using the tools we have available to us, it will also make the results much more sustainable.

Another principle is developing all 3 parts required to form a new habit. These are Knowledge(what to, why to), Skill(how to), and Desire(want to). Without all 3, our progress will be temporary at best as we will fail to fully ingrain the new habits we require – hence most New Year resolutions that rarely last into February.

The next principle is that of the Maturity Continuum. This continuum moves people from dependence, to independence, and further on to interdependence. A dependent person requires help from other people – it is a matter of survival, not thriving. Many people are dependent on a certain drug or doctor in order to stay alive or get by – while this may be necessary and is great to have available it can severely limit the level of health we can achieve.

An independent person takes things into their own hands and gets good results, while an interdependent person knows how to work symbiotically with others to get the greatest results possible. Habits 1, 2, and 3 will help people move from dependence to independence. Habits 4,5, and 6 will lead to Interdependence and the real fruits of your labour.

The final principle running through this series is that of P/PC balance, with P representing Production and PC representing Production Capability. This concept is famously illustrated by the story of the farmer whose goose(PC) laid a solid gold egg(P) each day. When the farmer focused too much on P, he slaughtered his PC in order to get more eggs. As a result he literally killed his capability to create wealth. The same applies to our health. How often do you go after a result in a way that actually hurts your ability to be healthy in the future?

I am looking forward to the next 7 or 8 articles and if you are in the area and would like to attend our in-office workshop on Tuesday, Jan. 8^th at 7pm, give Adele a call and reserve your seat. This workshop is open to patients and non-patients alike.

‘For every thousand hacking at the leaves of evil, there is one striking at the root.’

–       Thoreau